Natalie Webster beamed at her 13-year-old son, Moshae, as he sat straight-backed at the dinner table. She jokingly needled him about his careful grooming and formal manner around visitors as he stared ahead, alternately protesting and tolerating her affection.

"My boys are really special," said Webster, 32, sitting in the family's three-bedroom subsidized apartment in a complex run by South Side nonprofit Family Rescue. She appreciates Family Rescue, she said, not just because it helps abused women but because its employees counsel and advocate for kids.

Webster recalls her traumatic childhood and emotional abuse she suffered in a past relationship and hopes her boys — Moshae and his 9-year-old brother, Anias, — represent the end of that cycle.

"I don't want that for them," she said. "Whatever I have to do, I'm going to make sure my kids are OK."

Webster's hope to bring peace to her family is a small-scale version of Family Rescue's goal of eliminating domestic violence in Chicago.

"We don't think that you can do that without reaching the children," said Tricia LaPointe, the organization's chief development officer.

Founded in 1981, Family Rescue offers emergency shelter and subsidized transitional housing as well as programs including anti-domestic abuse outreach and court advocacy. Kids who accompany their mothers into the organization's housing get help from the Children's Services program, which receives financial support from Chicago Tribune Charities, a McCormick Foundation fund.

The organization assigns every child an advocate, and each receives individual, group and family therapy, LaPointe said. Kids with more serious problems receive more intensive treatment, she said.

Last year, the Children's Services program served more than 200 children, LaPointe said. The program helps mend strained relationships between children and mothers and addresses kids' behavioral and emotional problems, she said. The goal is to heal and strengthen "the whole family unit," not just the mother, LaPointe said.

"Our ultimate goal is that the families can live safe, self-sufficient lives, violence-free," she said.

Webster and her sons landed in Family Rescue's apartments in November 2012 after staying in suburban shelters. Webster, a tall, ebullient Rogers Park native proud of her family's roots in Trinidad, said the benefits of the counseling she received from Family Rescue trickled down to her sons.

"My stress was adding to their stress," she said. "I can't help them if I'm not right."

Now Moshae's grades are improved, if still imperfect, and the boys are more respectful to adults, the mother said. The family spends less time "fussing" with one another as they once did, she said.

Moshae said before coming to the apartments, he worried that life there would be boring because he's older than many of the other children. But he disliked living in shelters, and he said he thinks his behavior has improved.

He plays point guard on his basketball team, he said, and he'd like to keep playing sports. Asked what he wants to do as an adult, he just said he hopes to "help people."

Webster worries about trouble that could find her sons outside the apartment so she tries to make it a fun place for kids to gather, noting the video game systems she has.

Their "rehabilitation" has been her goal since Family Rescue took her small family in, she said.

"I want them to be motivated consistent, respectable young men," she said.